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Lichtenstein Before (and After) the Pop Hits

By

Kevin Nance

May 11, 2012 6:28 p.m. ET

We tend to think of Roy Lichtenstein in one context: Pop art's master parodist. His transformed cartoon panels—with hyperventilating speech balloons and transcribed sounds like whaam! and varoom!—sent up mid-20th-century commercial visual culture even as they dragged it into the realm of fine art.

No museum's contemporary-art collection is complete without one of Lichtenstein's sighing blondes or square-jawed fighter pilots. But that's usually all visitors see.